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It’ll Be Okay

October 2016:

“It’s never going to happen for me. Stop hoping. Stop looking. Accept it as best as you can, and always understand that what you are looking for does not exist.”

At least once a day, I find myself repeating this mantra to myself. Whether it’s when I see an attractive guy (“He’s pretty, but he’s probably no different. And what would you even do, anyway? It’s not like you believe in love.”) or during lonely moments of desperation when I decide to anonymously look through online dating profiles (“Why? You’d be to them what he was to you. You’d break them, because you’re broken.”)–the voice quells any hints of optimism that try bubbling out of my brain.

Every time that it does, a small piece of me dies. I repeat the mantra through tears, like a person reminding themselves that a loved one is gone and is never coming back. You do it to remind yourself that you need to accept it. The couples you see cuddling and holding hands and smiling–smile for them, because they have found, for one brief moment at least, if nothing else, a glimpse of the unattainable. Remind yourself that it isn’t worth it to feel those fleeting moments yourself, because while some are lucky enough to find love, your brand of it doesn’t sell. It’s either not enough or too much. It’s not going to happen. You’ll never plan your own wedding. You’ll never have Thanksgiving dinner with your combined families. No thoughtful Christmas gifts under the tree. No foot rubs when you feel sick. No admiring looks as you do something mundane like read assembly instructions for a piece of Ikea furniture.

No one in this world will love you fully, for exactly who you are, without wanting to change something about you. No one will treasure you in that sense. You have wonderful friends and a loving family, which is more than many people have. Let that be enough.

As I read through my journal, perusing it as I occasionally do to glean some insight and self-awareness, I stumbled upon this entry, nestled between a couple others that chronologically retold the weeks following my last break-up. Let me just say, when you’re in the moment, doing your best to go on with things and, in my case, fill up as many moments of your day as possible to keep the loneliness at bay and to distract yourself from the reality of the situation, you think you’re doing okay. I thought to myself, “Look! I’m out doing things, hanging out with friends…I’m living it up! I DON’T NEED NO MAN.”

And then, when you look back, you realize that no, you were not okay. xD Reading this entry, it became painfully clear to me how not okay I was. To adopt this mindset was to give up on one of the things in life I wanted most, just to keep my sanity–to keep me from letting myself fall in love with someone who was not right for me again. And again. And–why does this keep happening? No wonder I had my guard up.

All the same, it was not an ideal place to be, and I was not okay.

The point of this blog, however, is not that I became a wallowing mess of insecurity, cynicism, and drinking because I got my heart broken. I wanted to share this because I think that this mindset happens to a lot of people, especially in the aftermath of something painful. It’s to say that, despite how shitty life can be, and despite my convictions that I was done pursuing this particular thing in life, I did recover after all.

I was able to let go of my (at the time) very real belief that the kind of love I was looking for didn’t exist…and it’s an amazing thing that I did, because if I’d let it remain, I might have skipped over getting to know one of the most amazing people I’ve met. It’s to say that things get better eventually, and it’ll be okay. For real okay–not being drunk at a night club and crying on the toilet at midnight because you suddenly realized you had no idea why you’d even come to this club, because you don’t even LIKE clubs, and you’ve had way too much to drink–but ACTUAL okay, where you’re able to accept the events of your life, learn from them, and move forward with the knowledge that you can’t change any of what’s already happened, but you can change your perspective of those events, and that’s a much more powerful thing than we think.

So for anyone reading this who might be experiencing something similar–it’ll be okay.